Genealogy
by cousinswar
Summary: After the war, Ratchet tells his daughter the story of where she came from.
1. Chapter 1

**Rating:** K  
**Universe:** TF:Prime [postwar]  
**Characters:** Ratchet, OC [Persephone]  
**Pairings:** past Optimus Prime/Ratchet  
**Warnings:** past mechpreg [budding], SPOILERS FOR PREDACONS RISING

All my friends are writing postwar domestic fluff to ward off feels from Predacons Rising, so I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon. It worked for a start, but then I thought of things that gave me even more feels and this happened.

Incidentally, Persephone is a fan of Kyary Pamyu Pamyu. [Do not ask me why, it just happened that way XD;;]

* * *

_ before the sun rises let's head out to greet our coming tomorrows_

_we have no regrets in our resolve_

_—oh i know what i'm supposed to do!_

* * *

CHAPTER ONE

The datanet screen flickered, and something outside rumbled in the distance. It took Ratchet a moment to realise that it wasn't the storm steadily bearing down on Protihex, but the much closer racket of the school shuttle taking flight again.

He waited three minutes, distractedly rereading the same few lines of text over and over again. One of his colleagues' patients had taken a turn for the worse over the afternoon shift, and the nurses currently looking after the ward were scrambling to find a compound that would slow down the rate of solder attrition in the mech's damaged brain module. Ratchet had requested and been sent a copy of the patient's files, and thus far he'd spent the majority of his first free shift in weeks throwing his considerable experience behind the diagnostic effort.

Not that they'd gotten anywhere yet.

The medical chat window pinged, and a new file popped up in his inbox. He opened it up, and was halfway through skimming the updates when the apartment door folded open and his daughter trotted in. He watched her through half-shuttered optics as she dumped her personal datapad on the bookshelf by the door and sloped over to the energon dispenser, pouring herself a cube of her sparkling mid-grade – and, he noticed with a disapproving frown, skimping on the nutrient supplements that helped boost her mineral absorption.

To be fair, they made even good high-grade taste like metallic sludge. He huffed through his lateral vents and decided that he'd let it go, just this once.

"Welcome back," he said, minimising the workscreen and setting the computer on standby. "How was your day?"

Persephone, all of a quarter-vorn old and knee-high to a heavy standard, turned slowly and gave him a lopsided smile. Her EM field went slippery and elusive against his, her hands sliding behind her back, her optics meeting his gaze for a split second before skittering off to stare at a fixed point on the wall somewhere behind him. "Um. Fun, mostly."

Evidently she'd been getting into trouble again.

Ratchet, who had never exactly been good at toeing the line himself, supposed he could sympathise. According to her tutors she was a largely well-behaved and very intelligent student with an unfortunate propensity towards picking arguments with things she disagreed with, which when combined with the more rigid tutors was often interpreted as backchat. Like Ratchet himself, she tended to polarize people.

"I got your report card in my inbox this morning," he continued, leaning back in his chair and stretching his old joints before he – very gingerly – got up. Persephone's expression shifted rapidly between apprehension and excitement in the way only a sparkling could. She wanted to know, he could tell, her frame and field rigid with curiosity, but pure nerves kept her from asking after the results. _You just wait until you get to university exams_, he thought, _you'll really know the meaning of anxiety then._

"So what'd I get?" she asked once it became clear he was waiting for her reaction, so buoyed up with anticipation she was hopping from pede to pede in place, her optics round as saucers. "Come oooon, I wanna know what they said about me!"

Ratchet retrieved the datapad he'd sent the tutors' comments to and powered it up, delaying until Persephone was nearly vibrating on the spot. "See for yourself," he said, lowering the screen to her level. "Well done."

Her optics flickered, on and off as she reset them. A grin tugged at the corners of her mouth, her field swelling with sweet victory. She clenched her tiny fists and pumped them, then scampered around the datapad and attached herself limpetlike to Ratchet's forearm.

"Good work," he repeated, pushing his pride through his field and wrapping it around her like a blanket. "You've done very well."

She warbled something into his plating, wriggling jubilantly. Prior experience told him he had no chance at prying her off before she was ready to let go, and truth be told he didn't really want that in any case. She'd earned a cuddle or two.

He took another look at the grades. Five out of her six classes were hovering between 95% and 98%, with citations for class participation and high-level thought. Four of those tutors praised her imagination and communication skills, two of them her tenacity in search of answers. The sixth class, math, gave her a score of 91%, the tone of the tutor's comments one of grudging allowance. Ratchet had met that tutor a few times; he was Persephone's biggest detractor, a painstakingly fair mech, although he did like things to be _just so_. Persephone, who picked things up on the fly and liked to try things out without seeking permission to do so first, was bound to lock horns with him every so often.

Eventually Persephone peeled herself off and skittered back to the energon dispenser, her field whirling with sunny delight. "Dad, can I have some of the fizzy stuff? Just to celebrate, y'know?" She turned a pleading grin his way, optics wide and innocent. The automatic 'no' on his glossa melted and died.

"I suppose you've earned it," he said, shaking his helm in an effort to hold onto the last shreds of his authoritative-parent façade though he was fairly sure the silly smile on his face must have given him away. "There's a few rust sticks left in the snack cupboard; you may as well have one of those while you're at it."

Persephone squeed; there was no other word for it. Ratchet pushed himself to his feet again, watching carefully to make sure she only took one.

Thunder rattled the windows, static charge crawling along the lightning rods affixed to the balcony. Cybertronian storms came with little true water; the clouds were black and smoglike, carrying heat and conductive particles high above the surface, and massive. The meteorologists had forecast this one to last for the entire night cycle – hence why Ratchet was having to work from home.

Not that that was such a bother. Persephone came ambling around the leg of the worktable, still not quite tall enough to see over its edge, with a cup of energon and a rust stick slowly dissolving in it. She made a beeline for the windows, flopping down into the nest of cushions she'd made by the corner. Once she was there, she took a long draught from her cup, and pinned him with a scrutinizing gaze.

Ratchet let her look for a moment, flaring question through his field. "Can I help you?"

She made a noncommittal chirp, shrugging somewhat discomfitedly. "Maybe? It depends."

"On what?" He leaned back against the table, not sure he liked that look on her face. "I take it it's not homework-related."

She considered him for a long moment, the excitement slowly fading from her field. He recognised the longwave flickers that replaced it – the internal conflict of a mech trying to figure out how to tackle a problem with no obvious solution.

Eventually, her expression settled into slow determination. "How come I don't have a sire?"

Ratchet blinked. That hadn't been what he was expecting.

"What makes you ask that?"

Now the words came out in a flood. "Well, 'cause Greave's parents told him he was gonna have a little brother soon, so Tutor got us all to talk about our families, and… I'm the only one in the class who doesn't have a sire." She shrugged awkwardly, her optics downcast. "It's a stupid question, I know," she mumbled, "but, um… I just wanna know why? Please?"

"It's not a silly question." Ratchet found his bearings, offering his field as support as he crossed the space between them and knelt by her cushion nest. "Does not having a sire bother you?"

Reassured, Persephone lifted her helm and gave him a brilliant grin. "Nah, 'cause you're the best carrier ever! I was just wondering why, that's all. Tutor was really surprised, when I said I didn't have one. He asked if they'd died, or left us, or something, but I don't remember ever having a sire at all. Is that true, Dad?"

He nodded, only halfway surprised that she remembered that long ago with such accuracy. "More or less, yes. There are two ways people can make sparklings – you'd be familiar with the first, which is when two mechs merge their sparks to create a newspark together. That's called kindling, and it's how all your classmates came into the world. The second method is similar, but it requires only one mech. It's called budding, and it's what I did to create you. It's very dangerous, so your teacher's surprise is only to be expected."

Persephone blinked up at him, her optics bright.

"How come you made me that way, then?"

Ratchet vented deeply, his thoughts turning as they so often did to the terrible vorns before he'd had her. "Because the mech I wanted to make you with died in the war."

Persephone stared at him, her little mouth dropping open. She was silent for a long minute, before her jaw snapped shut and her expression firmed in almost comical determination. "You must have really wanted me."

Ratchet couldn't help the laugh. "Yes, I certainly did."

He bent down, offering her his arms. She chirred happily, throwing herself into his embrace and pulling herself up to lean against his shoulder, her optics half-shuttered and her vocaliser screeping quietly. Ratchet vented a quick puff of air, wrapping his field around hers and pulling tight, security and safety for the center of his entire world.

"Dad?" she asked, clutching at his collar fairing the way she'd done when she was a newborn, a long time ago. "Will you tell me about him?"

The old pain lanced through Ratchet's spark, though dulled a little by time and her love. He picked up the datapad and flicked through its table of contents to distract himself, and balanced her weight a little better in the crook of his elbow.

Lightning flickered outside. He counted three seconds before the rumble of thunder shook the windows in their frames. Persephone shifted in his arms, her frame thrumming with eager energy. She'd never been afraid of the storms – she'd never been afraid of anything, to be fair, always greeting every new thing with a squeal of delight and an exploratory poke. That worried Ratchet: what would happen when she finally met something dangerous? He wasn't naïve enough to think for a second that he would be able to protect her for her entire life, the war had stripped any such idealisms from his worldview, but_ Primus_, she was his _daughter_. There had to be _something_ he could do.

"This storm's going to be a bad one," he said at last. "Do you have any homework that needs to be submitted today?"

She made a face. "History quiz. Dates of the Ceasefire Accord, Treaty of Polyhex. Stuff I already know."

"Then it'll be hardly any work, won't it?" Ratchet carried her over to her terminal, waking the screen up and setting her down on the soft mesh cushion in front of it. The baby crystal he'd given her for Mid-Vorn glimmered beside the datanet modem, reflecting both the warm yellow of the solar light panels and the flickering storm outside. "I'll make you a deal. If you get it finished and sent in before the electricity gets shut off, we'll take some snacks into the berthroom and I'll tell you about the mech that might have been your sire, had things turned out a little differently."

Persephone's frown melted away. She twisted around to face him, the cushion rustling underneath her, and met his gaze with bright amber optics. "Deal!"


	2. Chapter 2

I am on a roll with this fic :D

* * *

_no matter how many seas stand between us_  
_I'm always standing by you_  
_don't be afraid to advance_

* * *

CHAPTER TWO

Persephone grumbled at the terminal screen right throughout the quiz. As Ratchet had predicted, it did not take her long to complete it, and fortunately so. The moment she logged off, the failsafes in the tower's electrical supply system went off, plunging them into darkness.

Ratchet found Persephone by the twin points of yellow light staring up at him from around knee-height. "Story time?" she asked, hardly bothered in the slightest by the sudden gloom. Lightning lit her up for a millisecond, reflecting bright off the curves in her armor.

"Yes," he acquiesced, kneeling, so he could scoop her into his arms again. She threw her arms around his neck as far as she could reach – which wasn't far – and clung, grinning like a loon into his clavicular strut.

Her good mood was infectious, and he found himself smiling in turn as he navigated through the dark apartment into the little kitchen nook. Rust sticks, jellied energon, carbon flakes, and the side of him that was very much a medic was horrified at such gluttony but the part of him that had embraced parenthood with both hands was equally determined that they be allowed this indulgence, just for this one night. Persephone clicked in delight, and miracle of miracles, didn't even protest when he put together a bottle of her mineral supplement to add to the hoard.

"So," she said, drawing out the vowel into a quizzical lilt as Ratchet carried her into the berthroom, "does this mean I get to stay up late?"

"It isn't even nighttime yet," Ratchet pointed out. "I don't know how long this story will take, but… we'll see."

Pleased with any answer that wasn't an outright no, Persephone tucked her helm under his chin and chirred, holding on tight as he bent over to put the treats down on his berthside table. His berth was softer than most; his back kibble required more give in the mesh. Persephone loved it. Ratchet still woke up screaming often enough that she wasn't generally allowed to share it, but he'd caught her sneaking a recharge on it a few times when he'd been on the night shift. He'd never had the spark to forbid her from doing so.

Sitting down for a moment on the side of the berth, he kept one arm curled around Persephone while the other dragged his pillows into a more comfortable configuration. He tucked his legs up onto the berth and wriggled backwards against them, sinking into the soft mesh with a sigh.

Persephone wriggled out from underneath his arm, scampering across the pillows to drag the packet of jellied energon candies off the table. Lightning flickered outside, the accompanying roll of thunder nearly simultaneous and loud enough to make their audials ring.

"What was he like?" she asked, uncharacteristically quietly, as soon as the last rumbles had died away. "How did you meet? How much did he love you?"

Ratchet reached for her, and she allowed herself to be tucked into his arms with no complaint. The bag of jellies crackled in her hands. She tore it open and engulfed one with the hunger of the newly sparked, licking the sticky detritus from her servos afterwards.

How could he answer her questions? How could she possibly understand what it had been like to live and love as he had during the war? It was ancient history to her, done and dusted before she'd even been born. She learnt about it at school, only to her it was called the 'Great War', as if any war was great, and the Decepticons who had been terrifying reality to him were to her little more than storybook villains.

To her, Optimus Prime was just a name.

She tilted her head back as far as it would go, smiling an upside-down smile at him, and suddenly he knew what to say.

"First, I want you to imagine something for me," he began, quietly, carefully. "Remember the day trip your class took to Iacon a couple of quartexes ago? One of the places you visited was the Iacon Hall of Records. Imagine for me the plaza in front of the Hall, the terraces that led up to the public entryway, the bright blue sky above. Imagine that the bomb craters are gone. There is fine decorative tiling lining the edges of the terraces, and crystal trees grow in gardens around the edges of the plaza. There are mecha of all shapes and sizes going about their daily lives. You probably won't see the archivists, though – they're all inside, because that's where the books are."

Persephone snickered quietly, but her optics were trained on him, her attention hanging on his every word.

"Now, imagine an old orange and white medic. He's in a rush, and in quite the temper, because two orns ago he was asked to give a guest lecture at the Iaconian Academy of Science on the topic of neural surgery, but he's had a busy two orns and has forgotten to prepare any notes whatsoever. The lecture is in two shifts. He could probably plan the lecture with the weight of his own experience, but he's never been one for doing things by halves, and the Hall of Records has one of the largest collections of medical data outside of the great Academy in Crystal City. He must be wearing a scary expression, because people take one look at him and quickly get out of his way.

"Here I want you to imagine another mech. He's red and blue, about my height, and when he smiles at you the world seems to stop moving. 'Beautiful' doesn't do him justice, because he's not technically beautiful, not like Knock Out or Firestar… but he has a way of giving you his entire attention, and when he's happy it's contagious, when he smiles at you it makes you want to smile back at him.

"When you visit the Hall of Records, you are assigned an Archivist to assist you in your reading, as much to protect the data as to help you find what you need. That day, I was assigned to Orion Pax."

Another crackle of lightning interrupted his story, thunder drowning out the beginning of his next sentence. He waited for it to pass, his second attempt a little stronger than the first. "I don't know how I didn't scare him away, that first day. I was stressing over the lecture so much that I kept switching back into Protihexian and the Iaconian that I did speak had a terrible accent, I remember scowling so hard I'd given myself a headache by the time I got to the Academy, and I _know_ I snapped at one of the other archivists when he came over to help. Even so, once I'd looked at everything I needed to, Orion wished me luck and saw me to the door, and the lecture went perfectly well.

"I didn't see him at all for a while after that. The thing about being a medic – the really inconvenient thing – is that the older and more experienced you become, the busier you get because your skills are in so much greater demand. I worked five shifts an orn for about six quartexes running, and spent the sixth recharging, in the chair in my office more often than not. One of my patients had somehow contracted a sensory virus that no-one had ever seen before, and his case just got worse and worse the longer we tried to treat him. So I took my intern down to the Hall of Records to research – and the archivist who helped us look was Orion Pax."

"Were you in a better mood this time?" Persephone chirped. Ratchet sighed through his vents and shook his head.

"Certainly less annoyed, but still not happy. My patient was dying, and I couldn't do anything to stop it. Orion's presence did help, but up until very late that night we made no progress. Orion worked every bit as hard as First Aid and I, and it was thanks to him that we finally found a possible solution. We raced back to the hospital, administered the patch, and watched the mech through the night."

Persephone's servos clenched around a nearly-forgotten energon jelly. "Did he die?" she tremulously asked.

Again, he shook his head, but this time with a smile. "He was almost fully recovered by morning."

"Good!" The jelly was suddenly remembered, and hurriedly stuffed into her mouth. She mumbled something around it; an entreaty to keep going, Ratchet guessed.

"I took an orn off after that; spent the first three shifts catching up on recharge, and went back to the Hall of Records to thank Orion the next evening. I nearly missed him, in fact – he saw me going in the main entrance as he left, and came over to ask after the patient. We talked for a while, and I figured that Orion had been on his feet long enough that day, so I asked him if he'd like to come with me to a café I'd found when I first moved to Iacon. It had been a long day, so I was prepared for him to refuse – but to my surprise he smiled at me and told me it sounded like a wonderful idea.

"So, we drove to the café, we sat down and made small talk, and it was a little awkward for a while because we were both still trying to figure each other out. It was still an enjoyable way to spend an evening, and before we knew it the early night shift was over and the café was closing. Orion walked me back to my apartment, and we swapped comm frequencies. I had work for the next few orns, but we'd comm each other during breaks, and somehow that made it easier to get through the day."

"What was he like?" Persephone asked, squirming up his arm until she could sit up and look him in the optics. "Orion Pax, I mean. Was he frowny like you, or smiley like Uncle Smokey? Was he pretty?"

At that, Ratchet couldn't hold back the laugh. "He was… like Orion Pax, is the only way I can describe him. He was pretty, and I wasn't the only one who thought so. Not in the way most mechs are good-looking, but in the way he moved and the way he looked at the people he liked. He had grace and charisma, and like I said, he made you want to make him happy. He was one of the kindest people I've ever met, but equally he was good at being obeyed. He never looked for places where he could command people, but whenever we needed a leader he was always there. He looked out for us all, he protected us, and he always made decision based on our needs rather than his own.

"In fact," he added, swallowing down a sudden burst of thick sorrow, "you know him a little better than you think you do. He's in your history books, although you won't learn the name Orion Pax until your second-vorn history classes. Do you think you can guess who he became?"

Persephone stared at him, optics narrowed in suspicion, for a long moment. Ratchet saw it, the exact moment she put two and two together, in the way her vents sucked in a sudden gulp of air as her optics widened and her brows almost disappeared beneath her forehelm.

"Optimus Prime," she whispered, the orange discoloration at the outer corners of her optical lenses deepening as she dimmed them. "Right?"


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter four to follow shortly~**

* * *

_when you're with me, and we try to understand each other_  
_then i will be able to become stronger_

* * *

CHAPTER THREE

It took a long moment before Ratchet felt able to nod and reply. "Yes, that's right."

Persephone sat back, reeling. He felt the shockwave of her amazement ripple through her EM field, citrine edged with sharp consternation. Her optics flickered, held his gaze, her servos curling against his chest.

Ratchet raised his own servos and braced them against her back, support and reassurance but more for his own sake than hers. He'd spent so, so long clinging to Optimus that the hole it had left in him when the AllSpark tore him away was still raw and bleeding, leaking slow grief like energon. For mental self-repair systems near-obliterated by eons of war, healing was going to take a long time, longer perhaps than he had left to live.

Truth be told it, was no longer a priority. Ratchet was wounded, but no longer mortally. There was a gaping hole in his spark, but orn by orn this precious, amazing little life he'd made dulled the pain, smoothed over the ragged edges and cauterized the bleeding arteries in his spark.

What was important was protecting her, making sure he didn't pass those same wounds on to her. Ensuring that when the time came, Persephone would be able to live her life in the present, mindful of the past but, unlike Ratchet, not ruled by it.

"Was it a secret?" Persephone asked, considering him. Her EM field sunk tiny shortwave bursts into his, clinging on like claws. The revelation had shaken her more than her expression gave away, and though her expression was set and concentrating, her field began to tremble around the edges the longer Ratchet looked. He urged her forward to lay against his chest on automatic, hands covering her frame and holding her close.

"Out of necessity, yes. I daresay there are some out there who suspected what I felt for him, but to make our relationship any sort of public would have been to put both of us in even more danger than we were already."

Lightning struck, somewhere close by. The thunder was deafening, bouncing through the spires of Protihex and echoing through the deserted streets below. Ratchet waited until it died away, one hand absently stroking Persephone's shoulders. "It helped that we didn't become… a couple, I guess – until late in the war, when both factions were worn down to almost nothing. I wish now that I could have told him earlier than I did, but it would have made things very difficult for us."

Persephone frowned up at him, her optics narrowed in the gloom. "Why? Didn't people want you to be together?"

Ratchet sighed through his vents. "You could say that," he allowed, retrieving the bag of energon jellies before it could escape into the gap between his cushions and passing it on to her. "You see, a while after Orion and I met, he became friends with another mech. His name was Megatronus, and he was almost Orion's antithesis. Opposite, I mean," he added when her face scrunched up in confusion. "He was big, loud; he liked to fight and he was good at it. It's anyone's guess why they got along so well, but it seemed they did."

"Megatronus? Like Megatron?"

A burst of hostility filtered through Persephone's field along with the words, strong enough that Ratchet frowned down at her before he could stop himself.

He tried not to mention the Decepticon warlord at all where he knew she'd hear. She was so innocent and refreshingly free of hatred for anyone, and he'd do anything to keep her that way. The war had bred generations upon generations of mecha who hated others based solely on what colour brand they wore, the filter spectrum of their optics – hate, they had more than enough of already. Persephone did not need to concern herself with which mecha had tried to kill him megavorns ago. That wasn't the way he wanted her to grow up.

"Yes, that's him." He vented deep, tried to fight down the automatic lump in his intakes that rose whenever he thought about the mech who had haunted his nightmares for so long. "He wasn't always the Decepticon warlord. Once upon a time, he was a revolutionary, fighting against a corrupt system. Your history tutor likely won't tell you this for a while, but Cybertron before the war was not a good place to live, for the majority of people. Life was good, if you had money. If you didn't – well, no-one cared. Megatron – Megatronus, back then – he wanted to change that."

"So why'd he go all evil then?" Persephone's frown deepened.

Ratchet knew she occasionally played Autobots versus Decepticons with her friends at school. She'd come home once, boasting of getting to play 'Optimus Prime' and the old crater she'd kicked her Megatron into. He hadn't been prepared for it – to hear the names reduced to a sparkling's game, the mech he'd spent most of his life loving and the one whose laugh echoed in the dark corners of his mind at night. He'd managed not to shout at her, the way he'd suddenly, terrifyingly wanted to, but the expression on her face as he'd fled into his berthroom and locked the door; that would haunt him for a long time.

The high grade had flowed that night.

"I don't know," he said, thinking back to the last time he'd seen Megatron alive. There had been something very different about him once Unicron's hold on his mind had been broken… almost as if he'd grown old overnight. "No-one does. Optimus didn't, and of all mecha he knew Megatron the best. My best guess is that he always had the potential for evil, and that his experiences eventually pushed him over the brink. Once that first step had been made – well, it's always easier to keep falling than to try to pull yourself back up.

"He and Orion were very close. I know that Orion loved him, and I had thought that Megatronus loved Orion in turn. They were opposites, but they fit into each other so well. I… to be honest, I was jealous of them. I'd been lonely for so long, and seeing them so happy together made it so clear, what I was missing out on, that it hurt."

Persephone's optics cast down, their warm yellow glow glimmering off the planes of his armor. "Didn't Orion want to be with you?"

Ratchet blinked. He lifted his servos, and she wriggled onto her side, grabbing hold of his fingers with both hands and cuddling that servo close to her chest. Her field radiated affection and comfort – don't be sad, Dad; I'm here for you.

His fans choked; a shudder went through his entire frame. His spark constricted in his chest, a wave of love indistinguishable from grief washing through his processors. Inside the privacy of his own mind he ranted and railed at his own inability to deal with the pain and get over it, get on with his own life. Every time it seemed like he'd made his peace with what had happened, something brought the memories back and he ended up a gibbering wreck, hiding in his own office or berthroom and holding back the howls.

He curled his hands around Persephone and lifted her higher, tucking her close into the curve of his shoulder and fighting down the sobs. He had to be strong, for her sake – the weight of his emotions wasn't hers to lift.

"We were just friends at the time," he managed eventually, loosening the iron grip he'd had on his field and straightening out the ragged edges, watchful, just in case the pain broke free again. "We were happy that way, and anyway Orion had had closer friends than me even before he met Megatron. Our relationship took a lot longer to develop."

Persephone made a small moue of understanding, resting her helm against Ratchet's chest and shuttering her optics for a moment. "So… what did Orion do when Megatron went bad?"

Cry. Break down. Nearly abandon everything he fought for.

He couldn't say that, of course. In public Orion had put up a brave face, played the role of the Prime everyone wanted to see, and done it better than anyone had had a right to expect. In private, however, Ratchet had seen how deep the cracks in his self-confidence ran, the wounds in his spark left by Megatron's betrayal. Oh, Megatron had insisted that Orion had been the one to turn traitor, but Ratchet reckoned that Megatron himself had betrayed Orion's trust just as deeply.

"It hurt him a lot," he said simply. Persephone didn't need the details. "Megatron got angry, but Orion was just very, very sad. When someone you love leaves you, whether it's by their choice or not, it hurts no matter how strong you are, and that hurt stays with you for a long time. Orion carried that pain with him for a very long time.

"I did what I could to help him, and as time went by, he healed. He changed, as well. He'd always been wonderful, as far as I was concerned, but I found myself noticing more and more about him that fascinated me. Captivated me, really. I spent most of my free time thinking about him, because it made me feel happy, and in the middle of a war that was rare enough on its own that it was worth celebrating. I'd always worried about him whenever he went out to fight, but after a while I started feeling myself hurt when he was injured, in my spark."

He rested his free hand above the central seam between his thoracic plates, above his spark chamber. Persephone tipped her face up, turning an open-mouthed smile on him. "You were falling in love with him!" she crowed, jubilant strokes of her EM field pushing against his own. "Right?"

"It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure that out – but yes, you're right." He returned her smile, offering her a fresh jelly to chew on as more lightning split the night. "I realised I was in love on a night quite like this, actually. Optimus was out on campaign, and I was stuck in the Crystal City base with the rest of the medical contingent, waiting for the first wave of injured soldiers to come back from the front lines. The lightning knocked out the power to our hospital, so the techies told us to go and get some recharge while they repaired everything. I lay in my berth for a long time, thinking about Optimus, wondering where he was and whether he was safe, and I wished he was there with me."

Persephone curled one tiny servo into a fist and propped her chin up on it, gazing up at him with dimmed, thoughtful optics. "How come he's Orion first and then Optimus? Why did his name change?"

"He chose the name Optimus when the Council appointed him Prime. I kept calling him Orion in private, until he journeyed to the Core and was given the true Matrix. After that it somehow didn't seem respectful to call him by his old name anymore." He glanced at the window, watching the evil black cloud curl past outside. "I asked him once, and he told me it didn't matter which name I used, because Orion Pax and Optimus Prime were one and the same."

His daughter hummed, nodding faintly. "So… what happened next? Did you tell him?"

Ratchet laughed, but it sounded hollow even to him. "Not for a long time."


	4. Chapter 4

_ there is no doubt_

_that there are things we must carry with us_

* * *

CHAPTER FOUR

Persephone spread her arms wide. "Do you need a hug, Dad? Because I've got plenty to go around."

Ratchet chuckled again, and this one was a little stronger. "Oh, I think I'll be fine," he said, dryly, but wrapped his EM field around her and gave her a quick cuddle with field and arms both. Persephone giggled, nestling into his armor and burying her face against his shoulder.

"Sooooo," she said, still smiling, "what did Optimus say when you told him? Was he surprised? Did he kiss you? I saw Phoenix' carrier and sire kissing the other day. It looked weeeeiiiird."

And he'd have to have a word with Smokescreen and Wheeljack, wouldn't he. Ratchet covertly rolled his optics. "I think it's safe to say he was very surprised. He was Prime – not many mecha saw him as a potential partner, and those that did mostly wanted him for the power being the Prime's consort would give them."

Persephone's brows came together in a dark glower. "That's not nice! You're supposed to be mates because you like each other, not…" she subsided into a muttered grumble. "Did he think maybe you might be like that too?"

"I don't know. I hope not, but if he did I would have understood." Ratchet stared at the ceiling for a long moment, watching distant lightning cast patterns against the steel. "The Exodus had happened by the time I finally found the bravery to tell him. He just looked at me like he was completely poleaxed, wide-opticked, his mouth hanging open. I hadn't seen him that… less than composed since before he'd come back from the Core. It went on for long enough that I thought he was going to say I was out of my mind, so I apologised and turned to leave. Then I heard his chair scrape, and I felt his hands on my shoulders. He was a lot taller than me, so he knelt, pulled me back against his chest and wrapped his arms around me. He didn't say anything, but I could feel his spark and it was so happy I half thought he was going to explode with it."

"So did you kiss?" Persephone repeated eagerly.

Ratchet raised his brows at her. "You have a one-track mind, don't you? Yes, we got to that eventually." No details though, not until you're a lot older and perhaps not even then. "We had to be very careful about what we did, because if it became known that Optimus was particularly close to one of his officers then that officer – me, obviously – would be targeted by the Decepticons in order to weaken Optimus. So, when we were in public, we treated each other strictly like friends. Optimus started calling me 'old friend', which was almost always code for 'I love you'. Jazz – you don't know him, he went missing during the war – had known him for longer, so I think it puzzled people, but we put on a good enough act that no-one really guessed at its real significance. We weren't able to be alone together very often, so we developed a lot of code along those lines."

Crossing her arms, Persephone rolled onto her front and rested her chin on the crook of her elbow. "How come?"

Ratchet shook his helm, giving her a wry smile. "There isn't a lot of room on a spaceship, in general terms. On battleships, there is even less. Optimus had his own quarters, but they were monitored all orn, and I had to share my quarters with my apprentice at the time." Generally they'd managed trysts in the washracks at unholy hours of the downshift cycle, but he wasn't about to tell her that.

"Is that why all my history books say you were just friends?" She blinked, and giggled. "Old friends, I mean."

Ratchet gave her a sharp look. "Have you been reading ahead again? I happen to know that's not in the curriculum until the end of the first-vorn academy."

Persephone's engine revved, unrepentant. "I got bored with the stuff everyone else is reading. I read it all already, anyway."

Ratchet subsided with grace. "Very well. Now I know what to get you for Aphelion, at the very least."

"More books!" she squealed, throwing her arms up in the air and very nearly backhanding him on the way down. "Does anyone else know you and Optimus were mates?"

"Not exactly mates," he demurred quietly, his amusement at her display of happiness sombering. "Partners, is what we thought. We wanted more, but it felt like inviting disaster to discuss anything more than vague wishes for the future. I knew that he wanted to have children, more than I did, but if we'd been in a safe enough place I would have gladly carried his newsparks. He knew that, and I think that for him, the vision was one of the things that kept him going even when his faith was wavering.

"Wheeljack knows. Arcee, and Bumblebee, and June Darby on Earth. They're the only ones who know for sure. Others could probably guess, but they're not likely to these days."

Persephone's optics went round and bright at the mention of the alien planet she'd heard so much about. "Who's… Jaawn Dirbee? How do I say it?"

Ratchet chuckled at the mangling of the human name. "June Darby. She's a human, a medic like me. I met her on Earth, and though she and I didn't exactly make the best first impression on each other, we became good friends. She's rather like Arcee, but less… impetuous, I suppose. I think you'd like her."

He'd often entertained thoughts of taking an orn or two to forget his responsibilities and visit the planet where the war had ended. It hadn't been long since then by Cybertronian standards, but on earth, forty years had passed. The children had grown up so fast: Jack was married, a CEO of some company and a father to three, while Rafael had a PhD in robotics and was the world's foremost expert in constructing high-level AI operating systems. Miko had gone into the Japanese national defence force and learned to fly a fighter jet. June herself was eighty-three now, old and frail. Their lives were so short it frightened Ratchet sometimes. He sent her messages every orn, and occasionally wondered what she'd say if he turned up at her door one morning with Persephone in tow.

He shook his helm, continued. "When we arrived on Earth, there were only seven of us. Two took the shuttle back out into space, hoping to find more Autobots to assist us. Flareup died during the second year, but Arcee and her partner Cliffjumper arrived shortly after that. Optimus and I worked ourselves rusty keeping that small team together. Then Cliffjumper died, and that was the beginning of the end. I thought it was going to be our end at first; Megatron kept coming up with new advantages and we'd barely manage to stop him. I nearly lost Optimus –" here he had to stop and count – "four times in less than a quartex. The first time he nearly froze to death; the second he contracted a deadly virus; the third he lost his memories of Primacy and was kidnapped by Megatron; and finally he was caught in our base as it was destroyed by the Decepticons. Fortunately Smokescreen was with him, and due to sheer resourcefulness Smokescreen was able to find a way to save his life. I never asked for the details."

Persephone screebled quietly, her optics wide and distressed. "What happened to him?" she asked, her voice quiet, as if she didn't particularly want to ask the question but needed the answer somewhere deep inside. "You said he died in the war."

"At the very end of the war," Ratchet clarified. His spark chamber felt overtight, his mouth dry and intakes as though he'd swallowed one of Persephone's jellies whole and it had gotten stuck halfway down. "I had, earlier on, discovered and begun work on a formula for synthesizing –creating – energon from other sources of energy. The Decepticons acquired the incomplete version, and found that together with raw CNA it created functional biomass. They intended to use it to cyberform Earth, but we managed to stop them, and when Bumblebee killed Megatron we turned it on Cybertron instead."

He stopped, vented in a deep breath. The words tore at the inside of his processor, screaming to get out.

"Optimus, in the final battle against Megatron's possessed corpse, merged the Matrix with the AllSpark in order to protect them. His own spark merged with them in turn. He… technically his spark never extinguished, but the end result is the same. He is one with the AllSpark now."

Persephone warbled faintly, empathic sadness washing through her field. He tightened his arms around her, and allowed himself to grieve.

Optimus' final words to him resonated through his processor queues. He had not died, not in the classic sense of the word, but ironically Ratchet felt it would have been simpler, if not strictly easier to deal with if he had. As it was, Optimus had gone onto a higher plane of existence, ascended to godlike status – and had left Ratchet behind.

Was it okay to grieve? It had felt as though he shouldn't – Optimus was not dead, after all. But his sacrifice had left a hole in Ratchet's life that could never be filled, taken from them the future they had hoped to build together. Mourning that loss had been all that he could do for a long time, even though to do so felt like disrespecting everything Optimus had achieved with it, as though he was prioritising one single life over the survival of Cybertron itself. Guilt at his own selfishness had nearly eaten him alive. Betrayal gnawed at the edges of the wounds it left behind, illogical and painful. Was I not good enough for him? –He knew it wasn't true, that Optimus had loved him more than he'd ever thought one being could love another, but the question floated around in the dark recesses of his processor on slow nights in the hospital, when death stalked the wards and the world seemed to laugh at him from behind closed doors.

Persephone squirmed in his grip, her tiny hands closing around the index digit on his right servo. She hugged him tight and scowled up at him, determined to chase away the demons besieging her carrier. Some days he saw more of Optimus in her than he'd ever dared hope.

"That is so not fair," she declared, still scowling. "You saved Cybertron together!"

"Life does not care for what is 'fair' and what is not," Ratchet sighed, stroking her back until the indignation in her field faded away beneath comfort. "You'll learn that as you grow up, just like we did."

"I don't wanna," she grumbled, still adamant. "If it's not fair I'll make it be fair."

He chuckled, patting her cheek with his thumb. "Given a contest between one little sparkling and the immutable forces of the universe… well, if it's you, I don't know which side I'd put my money on. You're as stubborn as I am."

Persephone giggled again, giving his hand an affectionate headbutt. "An' you love me for it, right?" Her optics brightened in sudden curiosity. "Why did you make me on your own? Didn't you say you wanted Optimus' sparklings?"

The words made something deep in his spark twist. Ratchet gave her a considering look, and wondered how best to answer.


	5. Chapter 5

**I started this to get rid of feels from Predacons Rising, but all it did was give me more feels of a different variety. I hope y'all enjoyed it as much as I did, anyway. Thank you for reading!**

**○ Cybertronian Units of Time:**

_Vorn _– Orbital cycle; Cybertronian year. [roughly 83 Terran years]  
_Lunar Cycle _– Cybertronian month. 26 lunar cycles in a vorn. [three years and four months]  
_Quartex_ – Cybertronian week. 4 quartexes in a lunar cycle. [Roughly 10 months]  
_Orn_ – Rotational cycle; Cybertronian day. 23 or so orns in a quartex. [Roughly a fortnight]  
_Joor_ – Cybertronian hour. 52 joors in an orn, give or take. [roughly 6 and a half Terran hours.]

* * *

_what can you defend lying to yourself_  
_there is no shame in falling to your knees_  
_just always make sure to stand back up_  
_so we can see each other again_

* * *

CHAPTER FIVE

Persephone watched him collect his thoughts with patience people seldom ascribed to her. Like Ratchet himself, she worked to her own schedule, and that schedule tended to be several times faster than anyone else's.

She was his budded child, her spark and frame and coding spun together from him and him alone. She shared his frame type, her little body already showing the stout torso, short legs and broad shoulders of a heavy standard. Her armor was sky-blue and pure eggshell-white. A minor glitch in the code she'd been built from had given her yellow optical filters as a default, red pigment seeping into them from the sides. When she'd first been born, she had been small enough that he could fit her in the palm of his hand with only the tips of her pedes dangling over the side of his wrist. His daughter to the core, tiny and perfect. Carrying her had been an exercise in misery, but the minute he'd been able to hold her in his own arms he'd fallen in love for the second time in his life. Regret had never even been an option.

"It's complicated," he said at last. "After Optimus' death I was… not myself. We were not bonded, but I nevertheless felt as though a part of myself had died along with him. He'd been with me for so long that we were essentially all each other had to connect us to where we'd come from, back before the war. With him gone, I had… nothing."

Persephone's sunny optics flickered in denial. "It was wrong," she said, a mulish set to her face and field. "Even if you don't have anything else, you've always got yourself. That's what Tutor says."

Ratchet smiled down at her. It wasn't a happy smile, his spark lurching painfully in his chest at the idealism radiating from her small frame, but it was a start. "I know intellectually that that wasn't true, but there is a difference between knowing something and feeling it in your spark. My spark has always ruled me, so, when it told me that I had nothing left, I believed it.

"I don't know that you'll ever understand what it felt like. I hope to Primus you never do, because I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy, and you, you're so much more precious to me than anything else." He trailed off, suddenly unsure of where he was going with the story.

Something rustled. He looked down just in time to see Persephone upend the packet of jellies, shaking it until one dropped out into her hand. "They're melting together," she began, and was drowned out by one continuous roll of thunder that lasted nearly a minute. "You're running too hot, Dad."

"I'm baring my spark here," he said drily, scratching the back of her neck. Her engine purred in contentment as she reared back, leaning into the touch. "Can you blame me?"

She made a noncommittal murmur, optics shuttering for a moment. "Jus' lemme put them back on the table."

"How about I do that for you, since I don't have to go cross-country to do it?" he suggested, gently taking the bag from her. Her field was starting to taste of fatigue, the exertion of the day finally getting to her. The chronometer in his HUD flashed the beginning of the midnight shift. He'd usually be chasing her off to her berth around this time, provided he was home.

He made a mental note to take the evening shift off more often. Persephone deserved to have him around as often as was possible.

The storm raged on outside, lightning flickering amongst the gathered clouds. His daughter's optics drooped further closed. He needed to wrap this up, preferably before she dropped into recharge in his arms.

"After a while, I started having dreams," he began, his vocaliser dropping into a somewhat hesitant undertone. He'd never told anyone about them, afraid of their reactions and besides which, each one felt so intensely private, personal and meaningful that it would have been like baring his spark chamber to share them. They didn't feel like his nightmares; in these dreams he felt safe, guarded and protected, the fear that had been a constant fixture of his life since the very beginning of the war a lifetime ago distant and easily ignored.

"What sort of dreams?" Persephone asked, blinking up at him. Her optics dimmed, her engine idling. She tucked her hands beneath her chin and rested her elbows on her knees, her field swirling lazily.

Ratchet smiled. "Good dreams. Optimus was in them. There were sparklings, as well. They started coming just after we met the first troop of newsparks to climb out of the Well, so I thought perhaps that the sparklings I was seeing were a representation of those mecha. I knew that Optimus had given his life so that those newsparks could be born – so, perhaps, there was the subconscious link.

"But I changed my mind after a while. You see, those sparklings weren't just Optimus' – they were mine as well." He vented carefully, his spark pulsing waves of complicated emotion through his systems. "I don't know how I knew that; simply that I did. A long time ago, Optimus had told me that something he wanted more than almost anything else was to see me working with sparklings again. I'd forgotten it almost as soon as he'd said it, but, I don't know, the dreams just brought it all flooding back.

"And so, I thought, that's something I can do for him."

"So you made me," Persephone finished, lifting her helm and meeting his gaze head-on. She didn't smile, but her EM field was suddenly a blur of shortwave activity, edged with gold and underneath it, strokes of vivid affection reaching out against Ratchet's. "For him."

"For me, too," he added. "The more I thought about it, the more I decided that this was something I wanted – needed – to do, for my own sake as well. Cybertron was coming alive again; more and more people were arriving, newsparks were turning up every orn almost, people started kindling again. My friends and comrades were moving onwards, carrying on with the business of living… while I was stuck mourning the past. I felt myself getting left behind. I needed something to focus on that wasn't just another memory of pain."

He had taken an incredible risk in budding her, he knew. If things hadn't worked out in exactly the right way, it could easily have ruined both their lives. He might have withdrawn even further or abandoned her entirely, reminded too much of everything he'd lost – and she would have grown up with a carrier who didn't want her, unloved and rootless, unwelcome at home but with nowhere else to go.

Ratchet shook his helm, banishing the image. The very idea hurt.

"So," he continued, watching her field smooth over as her systems slowly wound down into recharge, "I took an orn's break from work, asked Wheeljack to check on me at the end of the orn – I think he thought I was trying some sort of odd experiment, by the look on his face." That earned a quiet giggle. "Then I made you. I kept you secret for as long as I could – budded sparks are notorious for being reabsorbed into the carrier's body early on in the gestation, you see, and I didn't want to celebrate until I knew you were going to survive."

A solemn nod this time, Persephone's optics flickering on and off as she fought to stay awake with all the stubborn willpower she had. Ratchet smiled, cupping her cheek and audial with his hand. She leaned into the touch, her helm drooping against it.

"You were born in the middle of a storm, twenty-six years and eight months, just over eight lunar cycles ago. It seems like much longer."

Persephone nodded groggily, as if to agree. She mumbled something, reaching up to Ratchet's clavicular struts and holding on tight. He eased himself upright, holding her in place with one servo while the other braced him on the edge of the berth.

She tugged against his armor, sleepy but insistent. He huffed a quiet, affectionate laugh, lifting her up until she could lean forward and press her tiny forehead against his. Moments later, he heard her engine drop down into full recharge-mode.

"I suppose you got to stay up a little late after all," he murmured, tucking her into the crook of his shoulder and easing himself off the berth. No power meant he'd have to manually draw the blinds shut if he wanted to block out the lightning, but Persephone wasn't the only weary mech in the house.

He stood by the berth for a while, watching the electricity play through the spires of Protihex. Persephone vented gently in his arms, and didn't so much as twitch when the thunder rattled the plasglass windows in their frames. He really envied her, sometimes. To him the thunder sounded like bombs and fallen cities; it was sometimes enough to freeze him in his tracks, draw him out of an uneasy recharge.

Persephone would be sleeping in her own berth tonight. He didn't want to risk it against the chance he'd dream of the war again.

He pushed himself into moving, navigating through the darkened apartment via his proximity scanners. Something small crunched underfoot, and he resigned himself to checking in the morning which one of Persephone's much-beloved toys he'd crushed before she stumbled upon it and traumatise herself.

The door to her room was open, the floor inside strewn with datapads and homemade dolls. Ratchet carefully plotted a route through the mess, nudging the pile aside where necessary with a careful pede. She had a full-sized berth, but there was a permanent dent on one side where her small body had worn down the mesh overlay. He kept meaning to replace the covers, but every time he brought the topic up she said that she liked them that way, and whined for the rest of the shift if he tried to prove his point.

Pick your battles, June had said when he'd written to ask her how he ought to deal with it. If it isn't hurting her, and she likes it that way, then why bother? Save the parental wrath for making her tidy her things up instead.

Persephone's vents whuffed gently as he lowered her onto the berth, settling her on her back and drawing the thermoregulator blanket over her small form. Her hands curled into loose fists, one resting over her chest while the other stretched out by her side. Ratchet brushed his fingers over her chevron as he drew back, then stood watching her sleep for a moment. The tiny mobile plates of her face shifted, tiny changes of expression flickering across her visage as she dreamed.

Before long, the call of his own berth grew irresistible. He made his way back through the room, giving her one last look from the doorway. She looked younger than she really was in sleep, her scowls and grins melting away. The hand by her side twitched, digits curling tighter.

Ratchet smiled, and closed the door.

OWARI


End file.
